Is Addiction a Disease?

Is Addiction a Disease?

I have a friend, Allen, who at eighteen, became addicted to opiates. It was a horrible contrast that led to a couple of overdoses and a decade of misery. He was either high and out of his mind or he was sick from withdrawals and suffering, 100% of the time. I could relate in a way. I was addicted too, to benzodiazapine. That’s just the fancy word for Valium or Xanax of which I had a prescription for the maximum allowable amount when I was 22 and I made sure that I didn’t find out much about withdrawals during the very same decade. I thought that I was different, and in some ways I guess I did have a much different experience. In fact, even though he was a very close friend, all of our other friends and I had to separate ourselves from him. Nobody likes a guy that can’t handle his smack. Ya know.

There were many differences in our experiences actually. The main one being supply. My prescription was $8 a month, not even a quarter of what a dose of the drug he was addicted to cost at that time. I would get 120 every four weeks from the pharmacy and another 30 – 90, for $2 apiece, from a street dealer. Of course, Allen had to go out and hunt his down. And he did whatever was necessary. It’s a hard thing to get a grip on. He is responsible, but in a way I know that isn’t really him. Before the drugs he would have never stolen a candy bar. It seemed like no matter what the action and repercussion, he would put that drug first. It came in front of friendships and his relationship with his family. He stole from several of our mutual friends and I constantly heard crazy-Allen the addict stories. I did not consider myself an addict. I didn’t steal for it, I didn’t ruin friendships, I’m sure I kept the gossip mill busy, like him though, but I had an easy, steady supply of the drugs I was addicted to.

He forced us all away from him because of his behavior. We felt conflicted knowing that had he not tried drugs he would be the awesome guy that everyone liked. I’m sure he didn’t imagine he would ever become addicted. That’s never the goal. If you’ve faced addiction before, then you know exactly what I’m talking about. If you haven’t then you are taking the same position that we took right before we became addicted.  Of course, I’m sure you are in no danger. The difference was that were doing drugs then justifying it with denial, because prior to being addicted you could never image that life of constant dependence on a chemical. It often happens quickly because of the snowball effect that accompanies the feelings of sudden worthlessness. I believe Allen went through that as well.

I remember coming back for three weeks in the Army to do a Hometown recruiting Program before I became addicted to Xanax. When I left, Allen wasn’t addicted either, but in 90 days when I got back, I was shocked to see how he had changed. He lost his laid-back personality and charisma that caused everyone to like him. Allen was something else now. It was like a body-snatcher got him. I didn’t see the day to day contrast, but he was addicted heavily very fast.  I will never forget how he told me his back was starting to hurt and he needed forty dollars and got upset when I didn’t have it. I knew that he was off then.

A couple of years later, I got out of the Army for good and Allen hadn’t even gotten his driver’s license yet. He still doesn’t and he is 33 years old. He won’t have the opportunity for another three and a half years. He is finishing up a 12 year sentence for a drug related incident. I get letters from him and it breaks my heart that he is going through the torture that he is.

I only recently started wondering what made him so different. I always thought he just turned into a scumbag because he didn’t care about anything but OxyContin and movies…until he pawned his DVD player and cable was out of the question. For the price of a month of the premium package he could get an 80 mg pill and be high for five hours. I didn’t understand that kind of an addiction. He and I had different severities of addictions because, again the supply, and the price. time, until I got hooked on oxycodone in 2011 after trying it once. I couldn’t think about anything else the next day until I crushed one up (one means three, by the way) sniffed it off the bathroom sink. But, I watched him do them with other friends of ours and they didn’t steal from each other and get sick from doing it every day. Those things were so expensive, that my other friends that did them, did them about twice a month and eventually just quit spending the money. Money meant nothing to Allen in the presence of an oxy. He would pay whatever the dealer wanted. That’s why they became so expensive. I knew a hundred other people just like Allen in the town we lived in.

And just like Allen, the part of their brain located in their frontal lobe had no problem differentiating the euphoria of dopamine made in a lab, from the depleted neurotransmitter that used to be made in his head and associating that pill with the feeling. Seeing how many people that do become addicted to strong opiates after several days of abuse, compared to the individuals who do not, I could almost argue that it’s not a disease. That’s normal. However, I am familiar with the numbers polled by NIDA*, ASAM* and the like. The vast majority do not become addicted when they experiment with the same thing that had him at hello.

I have no excuse. His addiction is what kept me from using opiates myself for all of those years. I thought benzos (Xanax) were nothing compared to opiates, like oxys, dilaudide, morphine, heroin, fentynal and opnana. They may not be as instantly addicting for some of us, but when I was so high all of the time from abusing both, I didn’t stand a chance. I think opiates kept me at bay by the preventive prices for all those years, but when I discovered Tampa, FL and it’s plethora of Pill Mills, prior to House bill 7095 which stopped doctors from writing so many with a dozen or so sanctions, and prevented patients from “doc shopping”, making appointments with multiple crooked doctors, by instituting a database and policies on its mandatory use, Florida’s free-for-all ended overnight in November of 2011. I saw it on the news from the Hillsborough County Jail, in Tampa. I finally ran out of benzos, and I understood the desperation that Allen had been living with.

I didn’t know it then, but your panic switch is on permanent because the part of your brain that keeps us alive in dangerous situation is activated, and though you don’t consciously think so, your grey matter in charge of survival thinks you are going to die. In fact, random neurons are firing at a rate that often causes seizures and actually can lead to death. It causes painful tension that leads to insanity within a few days. The worst part is that when the “acute withdrawal is over, your brain may not return to its pre-addicted condition for many years. This is called post-acute withdrawal syndrome and it’s indescribable, because of the duration and the level of intensity, even though the brain has started healing and producing the neurotransmitters that it ceased to create when it was receiving either GABA or dopamine, without getting too technical, for benzos and opiates respectively.

The thing about addiction is that nobody expects it. I didn’t. I’ve often heard people explain that they don’t  get addicted, no matter, if the use occasionally, which is actually likely, but if someone has to explain that , then the chances are that they are saying that for their own benefit to justify abusing the drug, which is a common indication of denial of the disease.

National Institute on Drug Abuse

www.nida.org

NIDA is a huge Federal Agency that is responsible for research, funding, treatments, drug policy consukting

and anything relating to the relationship between drugs and everything affected by drugs. This is the Agency

that should have jurisdiction over drug policy reform in the US, I believe. 

NIDA was partly responsible for the recent teduction in severity scheduling reduction of marijuana from it's

ridiculously high Federal status of Schedule 1, which meant that the Federal government regarded pot

as having the highest potential for addiction and no medicinal purposes.

NIDA was the first agency to solve drug related problems with science. It was established in 1955 and has

significantly improved the level of drug recovery quality in America since it's inception.

American Society of Addiction Medicine

www.asam.org

These are two of several giant researchers of drugs through scientific method. ASAM predates NIDA and it was 
previoujsly a NY Physicians Association focusing on .Addiction. They added the AM Addiction Medicine in the 
seventies when most of there funding was from another giant that is ultimately subservient to NIDA. They started recieving funds then directly from NIDA to research and develop medical treatments. This organization advocates for the treatment of addiction medically and educates physicians and certifies then to be able to administer addiction medicine programs.

The website I am working on, is https://addictX.org. For some reason it is in groundhog's day mode. Everyday, I add content and come back and it's disappeared. I am going to switch back to an easier to use CRM until I figure out the problem. Check it out. I'm on Facebook, Linkedin, Instagram and rarely twitter, but I have to crank it up a notch. I am going to be depending on my community and online supporters to implement the Focused Life Program in a transitional housing environment in Octtober. If you would like to help. Please, join me and be a part of Focused Life. I know this program will succeed. But, the more people who care and can help the better. Thank you. And, please, be the first to leave a comment on this blog.

The Newest Designer Drug Takes it's First American Life

You may not have heard of it yet, but like many designer drugs this one causes erratic behavior and often death.

A new designer drug has hit the streets of South Florida, killing a young man last week. Known as “gravel” or, more commonly, Flakka, alpha-PVP has been on the DEA radar for over a year. Many of these designer drugs, known as “bath salts” and entering the market from other countries, mainly Eastern countries, have had an effect on populations elsewhere giving the US a warning of things to come.

“Cathinone” is the scientific name for the family of synthetic drugs that have burst onto the scene lately, being marketed as plant food, detergent incense and, thus the name, bath salt. These drugs only became popular recently, but have been around since the 1920’s. There is little known about the immediate effects of this and other designer drugs and nothing known about the long-term effects. That is what makes this class of drug so scary. We have seen how out of control, an individual can be who is under the influence of bath salts, when not long ago a man using a similar drug stripped down and assaulted homeless Ronald Pappo before the police shot him to death.

The new drug is molecularly similar to antidepressants known NRI’s (Norepinephrine Re-Uptake inhibitors but have a much different effect on human beings. This is a very dangerous and hard to contain drug. It’s dangerous for above mentioned and obvious reasons. It is hard to contain because it is cheap and if demand rises will flood through customs in packages and delivered to a buyer’s doorstep. One of the contributing factors of the popularity of these drugs is that it is not tested by conventional drug tests, making it an alluring alternative to more established drugs for the millions of American’s who have to take drug tests for probation or work.

It’s cheap, plentiful, novel and undetectable by common tests. Bath salts are no longer sold in head shops and gas stations, but have been substituted for more costly drugs by street dealers. It’s hard to say if this is fad drug or here to stay. Many young adults in Florida are buying a bath salt drug that’s active ingredient, MDPV, reportedly gives a similar high to Ecstasy. It is marketed by dealers as “Molly” (short for Molecular MDMA) and MDMA is Ecstasy in its purest form. However, what costs the street dealers less than $100 per kilogram, can cost the unknowing end user the same price for a single gram.

There are hundreds of these designer drug compounds and law enforcement still isn’t the answer. Until real education about drugs is introduced, young people will not have the tools to properly weigh the pros and cons of experimenting with drugs like these. The DARE program is a failure. It would be great if we could rely on parents to educate their own children regarding the dangers of addictive drugs, like Flakka, it’s never going to be a reality.

So what is the answer? Trial and error, perhaps, with a faster measurement dynamic of current program success. We cannot allow a program like DARE to be implemented by the same entity that gets the majority of it’s funding from the thing it is trying to prevent. The CDC and State Health Departments should have an escalating role in the prevention of drug abuse in young people. In fact, these agencies are more relevant to drug abuse than any other and must eventually be tasked with the jurisdiction over the areas or drug abuse and mental health. The old way is not working. Quite the opposite.

Law enforcement’s long-time jurisdiction over drugs and abuse has been a huge failure and led to a conflict of interest for our Departments of Law Enforcement. More so, growing up in a society that has always attempted to control drug abuse in this manner, it can be difficult to imagine a better way. This mishandling of our attempt to curb drug abuse has led to daily, tragic miscarriages of justices. Drugs being the most prevalent legal offense has shifted our attention concerning true criminal behavior and actions and resulted in massive amounts of money for the agencies that nibble at the problem.

Drugs, like Flakka, flow through our borders, and now through our postal services from other countries. Police make a valiant effort at fighting the drug trade, but as time has proven, are just inadequate. Law enforcement can’t stop something that is in such high demand by the people. Something must be done to minimize the demand. If our schools could effectively drill into our young students the absurdity and insanity of addictive drug use the way they drill in the multiplications tables, we would see a drop in demand and the cartels and pharmaceutical companies would have to find new jobs because neither is going to cater to the < 1 million Americans that want drugs, if our programs were successful. But, do we really want that?

After all it’s not just cartels and big pharma that makes money on the drug trade.

Flakka isn't news. It is one of hundreds of drugs just from its family of designer drugs. It wasn’t the first and won’t be the last drug to make it into America. Until we pull back our own veils and see the failure that this “War on Drugs” has become, will we be disturbed enough to make a change and stop the problem at it’s source: the demand.